From Online in China, Illicit Drugs Flow Globally ; Country Becomes Leader in Producing Stimulants That Are Outlawed Abroad

Levin, Dan, International New York Times

The authorities in China have shown little interest in seriously
regulating clandestine labs, turning the country into a leading
exporter of synthetic drugs.

Ordering illegal drugs from China is as easy as typing on a
keyboard.

On guidechem.com, more than 150 Chinese companies sell alpha-
PVP, also known as flakka, a dangerous stimulant that is illegal in
the United States but not in China, and has been blamed for 18
recent deaths in one Florida county.

The e-commerce portal Qinjiayuan sells air conditioners,
trampolines and a banned hallucinogen known as spice, which in April
set off a devastating spike in United States emergency room visits.

The stimulant mephedrone, sometimes sold as "bath salts," is
banned in China but readily for sale at the Nanjing Takanobu
Chemical Company for about $1,400 a pound.

"I can handle this for you legally or illegally," a company
salesman said by phone when asked about shipping the product
overseas from the company's headquarters in coastal Jiangsu
Province. "How much do you want?"

In a country that has perfected the art of Internet censorship,
the open online drug market is just the most blatant example of what
international law enforcement officials say is China's reluctance to
take action as it has emerged as a major player in the global supply
chain for synthetic drugs.

While China says it has made thousands of arrests and "joined
hands" with foreign law enforcement agencies, officials from several
countries say Chinese authorities have shown little interest in
seriously combating what they see as the drug problems of other
countries.

"They just didn't see what was in it for them to look into their
own industries exporting these chemicals," said Jorge Guajardo,
Mexico's ambassador to China from 2007 to 2013.

China's chemical factories and drug traffickers have exploited
this opportunity, turning the nation into a leading producer and
exporter of synthetic drugs, including methamphetamine, as well as
the compounds used to manufacture them, according to seizure and
trafficking route data compiled by American and international law
enforcement agencies.

China is now the source of a majority of the ingredients needed
to manufacture methamphetamine by Mexican drug traffickers, who
produce 90 percent of the meth consumed in the United States,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

As governments around the world have stepped up regulation of
these so-called precursor chemicals, the Mexican cartels have
increasingly turned to Chinese chemical factories.

Mr. Guajardo said his efforts to persuade the Chinese authorities
to restrict the export of these chemicals, which are banned in
Mexico, came to naught. Instead, he said, Chinese officials said the
problem was best handled by Mexican customs agents or they claimed
that Mexico's written requests for assistance had used the incorrect
typeface or were improperly translated into Chinese.

"In all my time there, the Chinese never showed any willingness
to cooperate on stemming the flow of precursors into Mexico," Mr.
Guajardo said in a telephone interview.

At the same time, clandestine Chinese labs manufacture and export
their own meth and other synthetic drugs around the world. In 2013,
the police dismantled nearly 390 meth labs in China, more than in
any other country in the region, according to a United Nations
report released in May.

These manufacturers have flourished in part because the country's
huge chemical industry is weakly regulated and poorly monitored,
officials say, making it easy for criminal syndicates to divert
chemicals with legitimate uses in making medicine, fertilizer and
pesticides into the production of new and dangerous drugs.

The labs have also figured out how to stay one step ahead of laws
banning illicit synthetic drugs simply by tweaking a few molecules,
creating new and not-yet-illegal drugs.

Since 2009, the number of new psychoactive substances reported to
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has more than tripled,
to 541, far outpacing the 244 drugs controlled under global
conventions. …

The rest of this article is only available to active members of Questia

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.